Soil

Soil

Soil is essential to life, including the sustainability of the world’s food supply. It isn't just dirt but contains billions of organisms and nutrients necessary for plant growth making it vital to life on Earth. It is also important for other resources such as water. For example, the more nutrients we add back into the soil such as soil organic carbon from decomposing plants, the more it is able to hold water.

Due to environmental pressures placed on the soil such as intensive agriculture and climate change, human societies have depleted the soil to such a large extent that it is unable to serve people and the ecosystem in a sustainable way.

In response to this environmental challenge soil researchers in sustainability at Newcastle University are developing ways to use soil to capture carbon and keep it in the ground, particularly urban soils and peat. They are also investigating how contaminating elements in the soil are linked to disease, plus mapping the soil to increase agricultural production sustainably.